Marat Guelman: “Things can work differently”

Russia's prominent gallery owner Marat Gelman: 'Non-conformist art was a local phenomenon. It was a very small group of people. Russia’s art world today is a hundred times bigger. We are talking about a whole art environment." Source: Kommerant

A man of many skills and deeds, Marat Guelman is Russia’s most well-known gallery owner, curator, political consultant and an inveterate provocateur. RBTH spoke to the man who calls himself a dissident.

Russia Beyond the
Headlines: The two words used most frequently to refer to you are a gallery
owner and a political consultant - a pretty odd combination

Marat Guelman: I became well-known in the 1990s when dealing
art was my primary occupation. Gallery ratings had just emerged and the Guelman
Gallery was always ranked first. Back then, being a gallery owner was an
entirely novel concept. So I think that in a lot of ways I became a symbol. And
Russia is a type of country where you only need single individual.

RBTH: But you managed to
juggle that with political consulting.

M.G.: It was only unusual when I first started. It was in 1996 -
I was running my gallery and at the same time co-founded the Foundation for
Effective Politics, along with [former advisor to the Presidential
Administration] Gleb Pavlovsky. At that time, it was quite rare, yes. But now
it is entirely normal. Just think about it: head of Putin’s presidential
campaign was a film director, head of Mironov’s presidential campaign was an
actor. It is quite funny.

RBTH: Recently you held
a press conference in which you and Aidan Salakhova announced that you are
closing your galleries, while another old art gallery “XL” will transition to
another format. What is happening to the Russian art market?

Marat Guelman's profile

Marat Guelman is
well-known in Russia
as a publicist and the owner of many galleries, including the eponymous Marat
Guelman Gallery. He is the head of the Modern Art Center and Perm's Modern Art
Museum. In addition, he owns the Guelman Graphics design studio. According to
Artkhronika (Art Chronicle) magazine, Guelman is included the list of the Top 50
most influential people in Russian art. First and foremost, he has left his
mark on contributing to the cultural development of the Perm Region where he
heads the Modern Art Museum. He is also well-known as a
political expert. Guelman is the co-funder of the Efficient Politics Fund, one
of Russia's
largest research centers for political studies. He left the center because of
differences with partner Gleb Pavlovsky.

M.G.: Over the last two years the gallery has stopped bringing
profit. I can only speculate as to the reasons, but I think the main issue is
that the present environment in Russia is not conducive to good market
conditions.

Art depends on freedom
as much as a car depends on gasoline.

RBTH: What about
non-conformist art?

M.G.: Non-conformist art was a local phenomenon. It was a very
small group of people. Russia’s art world today is a hundred times
bigger. We are talking about a whole art environment.

Also, most wealthy
people in Russia are now either state bureaucrats or people affiliated with the
state and they are not interested in revealing their income, which means they
don’t collect.

RBTH: You have
attributed poor sales to the fact that many buyers are leaving Russia.

M.G.: When we looked at our list of clients – people who have
purchased our art from 1996-2008 – we saw that more than 80 percent of them now
live outside of Russia.

RBTH: If such veteran
galleries are closing, what is going to happen to the others?

M.G.: They should take advantage of it. This is an opportunity
for younger galleries to show the ambition and fervor that the more established
galleries have lost. If they can find the kind of enthusiasm that we had in the
1990s when we felt like we were ushering in a cultural revolution and use their
management skills, they could even do a better job.

As Nikolai Palazhchenko
[art critic – RBTH] said, pioneers create the niche and those who come
afterwards make money off of it.

RBTH: Who are the
biggest patrons of the arts in Russia?

M.G.: Semenikhin, for instance. [Vladimir Semenikhin, founder of
Cultural Foundation “Ekaterina”]. Sergei Gordeev [founder of the Russian
Avantgarde Foundation]. I don’t want to give names, but they are very important
people with big collections. However, more than half of them now reside outside
of Russia. Of course, you shouldn’t forget Dasha Zhukova.

RBTH: What is the chance
that Russian art will at some point hold sway over the market?

M.G.: I dare say it has an obligation to. But it doesn’t depend
on the artists alone. You see, art is a type
of business where you only need a handful of artists to make a breakthrough.
Take Sensation, for example. The original exhibition featured only eight
artists, who later changed the entire British art scene.

If there were a similar
concerted effort to find and invest in talented artists, perhaps we could see a
change in the status of Russian contemporary art.

RBTH: What role should
the government play in this process?

M.G.: There are some good examples of how that’s done in other
countries. In the U.S., for example, business is the main investor in the arts
and it happens to be a very effective set-up. But they have developed effective
tax legislation, which gives investors tax deductions. Unfortunately, it
wouldn’t work in Russia, because it would breed criminality. Our mentality is
such that any form of financial incentive would lead to various corruption
schemes.

I have found that
municipalities make the best partners, because they are interested in the same
thing as the artist. Also, Russian regions are in such a lamentable state they
stand on equal footing with the arts. They are not in a position to set terms
because they need the arts as much as the arts need them.

RBTH: You are now
engaged in cultural policy-making yourself. You are the director of the Perm
Museum of Contemporary Art – part of a larger effort to turn the city into a
cultural capital. What were your motivations for the endeavor?

M.G.: I was 47 at the time and I was going through a mid-life
crisis. The gallery was doing perfectly well without me and I felt like all the
projects I undertook and the people I worked with were only making use of my
name and not my skills or talent. And when Perm came up it promised to be a
real gamble. No one thought it was going to work out.

RBTH: Did it?

M.G.: You know, I was recently at a museum conference at the
Pompidou Centre in Paris and my colleagues from other museums were offended
when they heard that Pompidou was only willing to work with the Perm Museum of
Contemporary Art. It is now more integrated into the world museum scene than
any other Russian museum.

RBTH: What about turning
Perm into a cultural capital? How much of that plan has been implemented?

M.G.: Around 10 per cent. We wanted to turn Perm into a normal
European city with a rich cultural life. For the moment, however, there is not
enough drive for that. So, what we did is we organized a festival, called
“White Nights.” It runs for one month. And the hope is that we will see the
concept slowly gain a foothold.

In addition to that, we
have opened the Museum of the Permian, the Stage-Molot Theater, the Perm Art
Residence. We are also about to open the Photography Museum and the
Choreography Theater.

RBTH: Still, don't you
think that some aspects of the project seem out of place in a city like Perm.
Take, for example, the Red People scattered across the city. They look quite
incongrous and forced against a run-down Soviet landscape?

M.G.: This is one of the most common complaints that we get. They
say things like, “What you are doing is great, but it makes the remaining
Soviet architecture look even more miserable,” or “You call Perm a cultural capital,
but our streets are squalid.” You have to understand that when we developed the
20-year master plan, we decided that we would start by introducing art that
would highlight the ugliness of the city and call for its transformation.
Perm’s last mayor told me he started getting twice as many complaints to have
the streets cleaned.

RBTH: Do you think of
yourself as a liberal?

M.G.: I do, though I have never fought for political power or
been part of the opposition. But I always say what I think. I present
alternatives. Without trying to change the whole system I want to prove that
things can work differently.

RBTH: Pussy Riot’s
performance at the Christ the Savior Cathedral is mainly seen as a political
protest. But what do you make of its artistic value?

M.G.: I refuse to debate the artistic value of their performance
while the girls are still in prison. The most important thing right now is that
they are released.

RBTH: Many Russians are
already too wary of contemporary art. Don’t you think their performance has
only exacerbated this attitude?

M.G.: I can’t even begin to tell you how many problems I have
had because of Pussy Riot. At the same time, radicals perform a very important
function. On Dec. 10 [during an
election protest in Moscow] artists realized that they were no longer the
social avant-garde. Society proved that it was ahead of them, that it was more
radical. It was a lesson to them, a reminder that there was still no democracy,
no freedom of speech and that they should resist being integrated into the
system.

RBTH: The case against
Pussy Riot appears to be in limbo right now. What resolution do you think is
the most realistic?

M.G.: There is only one solution. The girls should be released. Then the
charges brought against them should be changed